By Dwaine Bullock Dragon Quest fans young and old know by now that Dragon Quest VIII will be making its way to America this fall. November 22 to be exact. Since the demo made its debut at this year's E3, detailed information on the demo has been scarce. There have been a few new tidbits in an article here and a message board post there, but not a feature that's gotten down and dirty with it. Recently I managed to get my hands on the demo to give you guys the lowdown on what to expect from the "new" DQ VIII. Currently there are two ways to acquire the demo. The first was through an August subscription promotion for Shonen Jump. The demo is also being given away as a pre-order bonus. In the future, the official DQ VIII site now has a page to sign up for a free copy and a keychain will be mailed to you. If you get an hour out of a demo, you're pretty lucky. You've hit the jackpot with the DQ VIII demo because you've got at least a three to four hour game! It does a great job hitting the game's main aspects. First you have a Story Mode that features the Hero and Yangus going on a fairly short quest to fetch a crystal ball for the fortune teller Kaldarasha and his daughter Valentina. While on the errand, you'll level up, learn some spells, get introduced to the Skill Point system and encounter a nice variety of monsters. Next you have a Battle Mode, which has you running around the world fighting monsters with all four party members. So if you like an interesting story or just want to smack a few Slimes around, the demo's got something for you. Both modes give you an enormous area to explore! Let's go ahead and get the graphics out of the way. Akira Toriyama has designed a few 3D games from Tobal to Dragon Ball. This is the first time Toriyama's unique pen and ink style has been perfectly rendered in 3D. A distinct art style is difficult to accomplish in 3D animation and Level 5 should be showered with awards and stuck in the history books. DQ VIII's world is massive and detailed. Trees move slowly in the wind and butterflies flutter around flower beds. The sense of scale is amazing. You'll walk off a mountain and can't belive you were that far away once you turn around. Grand Theft Auto features a large area with minimal loading time. But let's face it; GTA's graphics are below average and near PSOne quality at times. DQ VIII proves that with the right engineers and programmers you can have a graphical powerhouse and huge world with virtually no load time. The camera control is perfect. It never gets in the way or hung on an object. You never have to stop to fidget with it. No matter where you are, you can always have your favorite angle. More games could have camera control this easy and smooth. DQ VIII's soundtrack is one of the best in the series. The opening fanfare is the Symphonic Suite version but the rest is from the original soundtrack. The original tunes are being replaced with the Symphonic Suite in the final version, but the original soundtrack is still fantastic. Who cares if it's synthesizer? It's still good music! The localization is very nice. It's done in English-English, meaning words like "favorite" and "color" has that pesky letter U added to them. Since Final Fantasy X, many fans have been critical of SquareEnix's voice work. But DQ VIII features excellent voice acting. All the voices fit the characters very well and none of the lines sound forced or cheesy. Yangus does sound familiar but I haven't been able to figure it out just yet. Voice acting is absent from Battle Mode, but you can hear a little bit of what Jessica and Angelo (Kukule) sound like if they die or by using the "intimidate" command. Voice Samples Bartender and Kaldarasha Yangus Trode and Yangus Trode Yangus Angelo Jessica While I'm not a fan of the font they chose, it looks much better on screen than the screen shots lead you to believe. It's clean and easy to read. Since the DQ series is "casual", a sans serif font would've been a better choice. Casual, sans serif typefaces are used with DQ in Japan. Funny thing, the old font is still present when it's shown above the characters in battle and fits perfectly bolded and with the slight shadow. In the screen shots released last summer, the characters name was still featured in the text window before the dialogue. "Kaldarasha: I have a good size afro and greasy moustache." for example. Now the character's name is featured in a tab at the top of the text window. This is a fantastic little touch that frees up room in the window and allows for more text with less scrolling. The battles still move as fast as ever. I really love a new addition that allows you to select a specific monster in a group. Instead of relying on the AI, you choose if you want to attack monster A, B or C. This is something they should've had since DQ II! Some of the name changes are good. Wyvern Wings have been changed back to Chimera Wings. Bunnicorn does sound better than Horned Rabbit. Why Toppo was changed to "Munchie" I'll never know. I guess it's because he munches on cheese. Along with DQ VIII's announcement, there was news of a new graphical user interface tossed in. Someone associated with SquareEnix said, "Americans need a GUI" and it came off like corporate thinking and a knock at western gamers. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! As you all know, the DQ series has always had text based, non-intrusive menus. They weren't pretty, but they were easy to use and got the job done quickly and efficiently. The new GUI actually hinders some of DQ VIII's gameplay instead of improving it. Let's take a look at the new sub screen courtesy of Game Informer. It's changed a little since this picture was taken. A short usage description now appears below the item spaces. The good news is it comes up about as fast as the regular menu. The "old paper" design looks great and I appreciate the work put into it. Unfortunately, there's no main focus. With so many images and text, it's bombarding the player with too many elements. Am I supposed to be looking at stats or items? Navigating it doesn't feel natural. My first instinct is to move the cursor to the right to the items, but you can't. Like the old menus, you have to select the section, select the character, and then you get to the items. Scrolling through the sections, stats and options work fine, but the cursor in the Item and Magic sections move a little slower. In VI or VII, the Whistle command was used to quickly build job classes. With the text menus and cursor memory, you could call monsters in half a second. Now you have to move over to Magic, slowly scroll down to Yangus and then slowly scroll all the way down to Whistle. At first glance, this may sound like nitpicking, but seemingly small things like this become major annoyances later in the game, especially if it's something you're going to be doing over and over. Item management is the worst of the new GUI's problems. Without the natural flow of the old menu, the result is clunky and a time waster. On the positive side, when you move the cursor over the item you're treated to a nice description and are able equip it quickly. With the old menus your cursor was defaulted to the first useable item. If you used something like an Herb, the rest of your items moved up the list. The new GUI doesn't do any of this. It uses squares for items. The cursor has no memory, so it starts on the first square, which is usually an equipped item. If you use an item, the menu does not organize itself and the cursor remains on the empty space. So you have to manually organize your items one by one. After and going through three commands and lots of scrolling, you've succeeded in doing something the text menus did automatically. Since the shop menus are still text based, it's actually easier and quicker to manage and equip your items while shopping. This GUI is far from broken, but half of it is clunky and time consuming. The Stats and Misc. sections work great, but the Item and Magic sections still need major work. If the problems aren't fixed, I'd like to see a modern/classic option to get the original menus back. The text windows have been redesigned. It's no longer a black window with a white, rounded corner frame. The new text windows look similar to Chrono Trigger's but blue instead of gray. They look nice, very clean and easy to read. But it clashes with the sub screen's design. It seems like the team who worked on the text windows and the team who worked on the sub screen didn't work together so the game could have a single, unified design similar to Dragon Quest Monsters 1+2. The monsters look amazing. Most of them look just like their 2D Photoshop airbrushed counterparts. The lighting and animations are fantastic. Metal Slimes shine. The Drakees even do little loops while you're deciding what to do. However, some monsters are missing some of the charm they had during their stint with Heartbeat. Level 5 has done an unbelievable job with the monsters; don't get me wrong! I just feel a few are missing the great personality they once had. Maybe it's the transition to 3D since sometimes you can't always accomplish with a model, what you can with a 2D animation. Compare some of the Slimes and you'll see what I mean. Speaking of the monsters, there are some odd grammar choices concerning them. Unless they're at the beginning of a sentence, the names are not capitalized. Technically it's correct since it's using the monsters as nouns. But, I think it since they are names, they probably should be capitalized. There are some monsters with long names and capitalization helps them stick out from the battle text. "The Mischievous Mole smoothly dodges the attack." for example. Let's talk about spell names! As some of you already know, nearly every spell name has been changed to reflect the original's onomatopoeia. Arguably, this was something Nintendo should've done back in 1989. While many of the names aren't bad at all, I think some previous names should've been kept for continuity's sake. I know SquareEnix is aiming a new audience, but there are already thousands of American Dragon Quest fans and those are the established names. Nintendo and Capcom won't suddenly start calling Toad "Kinopio" or Megaman "Rockman" just because those are their Japanese names. The spell changes are Heal to Miniheal Healmore to Mediheal Antidote to Squelch Blaze to Frizz Fireball to Sizz Icebolt to Crack Snowstorm to Crackle Infernos to Woosh Bang remains intact Sleep to Snooze NumbOff to Tingle Upper to Buff Increase to Kabuff Sap remains intact Defense to Kasap Chaos to Fuddle SpeedUp to"Acceleratle" Stopspell to Fizzle Outside to Evac (glad they ditched Pop) Return to Zoom Since there are camera, sound and screen size options, I'd like to see a button configuration added. The Circle now calls the sub screen and Triangle is cancel. Sometimes it gets awkward in battle. Square for shortcut, X for sub screen, Circle for cancel and Triangle for map would be a more natural layout. Three sounds were removed. The first was the stair step sound. The second was the "critical hit" sound. The third was the spell casting sound. There are no new sounds in their place. They're just gone. Except for those three, all the classic sounds are intact. This might just be in the demo build. The stair and critical hit sounds I can live without, but the spell casting effect was a long time staple. If it has been permanently removed, it was a boneheaded decision, especially since they chose to leave the rest in. There are a few spelling and grammar errors. There's "Acceleratle" mentioned above. When a monster is out of MP "aren't sufficient" is used instead of "isn't sufficient". They're probably using "Magic Points" so "aren't" would be correct. But with MP being singular in the battle text it looks off. These should be fixed before the final version. Heartbeat isn't on this title so "civilisation" and "realise" shouldn't get past the proofreaders this time. The fight screen has a new stats window and I flat out hate it. It's a big, busy, blocky design that tends to draw your eye away from the monsters. The profile images are not needed. If you've been playing the game for more than five minutes, you know who your characters are. During the fight you always see them in action and in formation. The bars need to go or incorporated in with an overall better layout. Who did the pre-press on the demo disc's packaging? SquareEnix has always done a great job with their graphic design but the back is a muddy mess. But I don't know if it was done quickly or what but it's one of the worst print jobs I've seen for a major product in a long time! The screen shots on the back are the only time I've ever seen DQ VIII look bad! At the end of the day, DQ VIII is a wonderful game. The only things that kick it down a notch are some of the changes. The current slogan says, "Four million people can't be wrong!" Mmmk, then why change something those four million people liked? If I were reviewing it, as it stands now I'd give it, as The Sessler would say, "A four… out of five." It has all the elements for a mainstream hit, but I do think the new interface is going to be the one thing that will work against them in the press and with the fans. -The Dwaine